Report finds one-third of local employers facing labour shortage, predicts future job growth

A report predicts employment in Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo could grow by nearly 15,000 jobs by 2025. But for now, 33 per cent of employers surveyed for the report are reporting a shortage in skilled and non-skilled labour.

The report, which was commissioned for Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo Economic Development and Tourism (FMWBEDT), predicts there could be more than 93,000 jobs locally by 2025 from 78,808 today. The report’s worst-case scenario is a loss of 79 jobs for the region. A mid-level prediction is 6,000 new jobs in five years.

These predictions include the COVID-19 pandemic recovery, although the report’s authors acknowledge the next five years carry political, economic and social uncertainty that could impact the region.

“This really is a document that is a tool for everyone,” said Lisa Sweet, FMWBEDT director of business investment and attraction. “There might also be organizations that were not involved in this study that might want to take a lead in certain areas as well. But the first strategy under labour market information and maintaining current regional market information is something that our organization will be doing moving forward.”

The report was authored by Applications Management Consulting Ltd. in partnership with Willow Springs Solutions, and included FMWBEDT, the Athabasca Tribal Council and Fuse Social. Researchers surveyed 245 local employers, interviewed 20 stakeholders and held 10 virtual discussion groups. They also found 3,112 vacancies in the region.

The highest vacancies were found in the food service sector, with a 19.3 per cent of positions unfilled, followed by information and cultural sector with 13.1 per cent. Of the employers struggling to hire people, 31 per cent said they had recruitment plans.

The hardest jobs to fill include cooks, construction trades’ helpers and labourers, light duty cleaners, food counter and kitchen staff, and crane operators. The jobs with high rates of people quitting include petroleum, gas and chemical process operators; security guards; heavy equipment operators and truck drivers. The report states many of those same jobs will be in demand in 2025.

Video: Canadian employers offering incentives for workers amid labour shortage (Global News)

Even during an economic crisis, 28 per cent of employers reported people voluntarily leaving within the past 12 months. Employers argued they had trouble getting people to come to the region, particularly rural areas. Other factors include getting people who were on CERB to return to work, competition with larger employers, the loss of Northern Living Allowances in some fields, and a shortage of skilled child-care workers.

“We are working on a job fair for September,” said Dianna de Sousa, executive director for the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce, to address the gaps. “Based on requests from a number of our members we are going to be working with them on job descriptions. [The job fair] will be blended, both virtually and in-person.”

The authors recommended two strategies moving forward for the region; maintain a labour market committee and define shared goals among regional stakeholders.

“Understanding labour patterns and trends is essential to remaining competitive in an economy and labour market with changing demographics, training demands and technological advances,” said Kevin Weidlich, president and CEO of FMWBEDT, in a statement. “The labour market conditions identified are a reflection of this point in time, as market conditions evolve, the report’s strategies and priorities may shift.”

-with reporting from Vincent McDermott

smclean@postmedia.com

Scott McLean, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Fort McMurray Today

CAPITALI$M IS CRISIS

Millers, bakers fret as drought withers North America's spring wheat


By Rod Nickel and Karl Plume

© Reuters/KARL PLUME Spring wheat plants stunted by drought stress near Larimore, North Dakota

WINNIPEG, Manitoba/FARGO, N.D. (Reuters) - Millers and bakers are draining wheat reserves and paying more for spring wheat used in baking, as drought shrivels crops across the Canadian Prairies and northern U.S. Plains that produce more than half of the world's supply.

U.S. and Canadian farmers are bracing for a sharply smaller spring wheat harvest due to the driest conditions in decades, as severe weather damages crops across the hemisphere, from heat scorching cherries in the U.S. Pacific Northwest to frost chilling sugarcane in Brazil.

While overall global wheat stocks are large, the drought affects mainly the high-protein spring wheat crop that millers such as Archer Daniels Midland Co and bakers including Grupo Bimbo rely on to produce the texture and moistness in baked goods that consumers expect.

Importers from Britain to China must pay up for limited North American harvests or turn to other suppliers like Australia and Russia.

Minneapolis spring wheat futures are trading near nine-year highs, leaving Camas Country Mill in Eugene, Oregon braced to pay more, said owner Tom Hunton. He plans on passing his higher costs on to the mill's bakery customers.

Camas Country will rely on stockpiled wheat from last year to top up this year's supplies to produce flour. But Hunton worries about the drought carrying into next year.

"This isn't sustainable for anyone," he said.

In Canada, bread prices may rise as much as 6.5% by late this year, said Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

U.S. prices are more difficult to forecast, since flour prices dropped earlier this year as lockdowns eased and fewer people baked at home, he said.

STEEP DROPOFF

Canada's spring wheat crop is expected at between 16 and 20 million tonnes, well off last year's 25.8 million, said Bruce Burnett, director of markets and weather information at MarketsFarm. Just 16% of spring wheat in Saskatchewan and 21.6% in Alberta is in good or excellent condition, according to provincial governments.

The U.S. spring wheat harvest is expected to drop 41% from a year ago to the lowest production in 33 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The USDA on Monday estimated that just 10% of the country's spring wheat crop was in good or excellent condition, down from 73% a year ago and the lowest rating for this point of the season since the 1988 drought.

In Montana, where the USDA has deemed 42% of spring wheat in very poor condition and another 43% in poor shape, growers are buying out of sales contracts inked earlier in the season with elevators because they will not have wheat to deliver.

"I cancelled more contracts last week than I wrote. If they don't have a crop, they have no choice," said one commercial grain buyer who declined to be named as he is not authorized to speak to media.

IMPORTERS ADJUST

China, which normally buys modest amounts of North American spring wheat to make high-quality bread and baked goods, will likely buy more from other suppliers such as Australia, said a China-based trader with an international trading house.

Russia may make up some of North America's shortfall in the global market. Southern Russia, the country's main wheat-producing region, is producing wheat with higher protein than a year ago, Dmitry Rylko, head of the Moscow-based IKAR consultancy, said.

Spring wheat from Russia and Kazakhstan, however, does not have the same characteristics important for baking, such as gluten strength, as U.S. hard red spring wheat and Canadian Western Red Spring, said Mike Spier of U.S. Wheat Associates, a trade group that promotes U.S. wheat overseas.

The drought will force bakers to change how they work with flour, adding more water to compensate for dryness and making other adjustments to avoid producing crustier-than-usual buns, said Glenn Wilde, owner of Harvest Bakery in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

United Kingdom baker Warburtons buys half of its wheat from Canada, about 200,000 tonnes annually, grown by farmers to the company's specifications. The company will pay more this year to ensure it acquires enough Canadian spring wheat, said Adam Dyck, Warburtons' Canadian program manager, adding that many kernels may be too shrivelled to mill into flour.

Dyck said he is accustomed to seeing pockets of drought on the Prairies, but nothing this widespread.

"It's pretty unique for this generation," he said.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Karl Plume in Fargo, North Dakota; additional reporting by Julie Ingwersen in Chicago; Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris, Polina Devitt in Moscow, Hallie Gu in Beijing, Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

This is how climate change can infect the global food supply


The availability of food and how crops will fare as a result of climate change has long been of interest to environmental researchers, but scientists are now finding other threats to food supplies that can severely impact global food security.

Climate change may pose an increased risk for crops to become infected with pests and pathogens, leaving the yields inedible and risking quantities of the world's food supply, according to a study published Thursday in Nature Climate Change.

© Fred Scheiber/AFP via Getty Images In this July 12, 2021, file photo, a farmer drives a tractor across a soy field in Peguilhan, France.

Researchers at the University of Exeter in England studied models for the production of four major commodity crops -- maize, wheat, soybean and rice -- as well as eight temperate and tropical crops, to predict how the crops would respond to future climate scenarios.MORE: Sustainable crop, timber production can reduce extinction of species by 40%: Study

The researchers found that, overall, the yield of the crops will increase at high latitudes, such as North America and parts of Europe and Asia. However, the findings also suggest that risk of infection from 80 fungal and oomycete, or fungal-like, pathogens will increase at high latitudes as temperatures increase, according to the paper.

© Marcelo Teixeira/Reuters, FILE In this April 1, 2018, file photo, a corn crop is seen at Cercado Grande farm, in Brazil.

As global temperatures warm, pest outbreaks are common, and pathogens can more easily attack crops, scientists said. Temperature is a "major determinant" of disease risk, and global distribution of plant pathogens have already shifted with the current warming, according to the study.

MORE: Sustainable crop, timber production can reduce extinction of species by 40%: Study

Climate change will not only affect the number of pathogens able to infect crops, but the composition of how the pathogens are assembled as well, the scientists said.

© Karl Plume/Reuters Crop scouts survey drought-stressed spring wheat near Grandin, N.D., July 29, 2021.

The higher temperatures also pose the possibility of major shifts in species composition within pathogen communities in some regions, such as the United States, Europe and China.MORE: How corn farmers are adapting to climate change

Food scarcity is a "continuous concern" as global populations expand, the amount of arable land decreases and the threat of climate change increases.

The researchers concluded that plant pathogens represent a "major threat" to crop production and food security, which reinforces the need for "careful crop management."

Line 3 pipeline opponents file suit on behalf of wild rice


OGEMA, Minn. (AP) — Opponents of Enbridge Energy's Line 3 oil pipeline replacement across northern Minnesota are taking a novel legal approach to try to halt construction — they are suing on behalf of wild rice.

Wild rice is the lead plaintiff in a complaint filed Wednesday in White Earth Nation Tribal Court. The lawsuit, which names the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources among the defendants, advances a legal theory that nature in itself has the right to exist and flourish, the Star Tribune reported.

The lawsuit is only the second “rights of nature” case to be filed in the U.S., said Frank Bibeau, a lawyer for the White Earth tribe.

The plaintiffs include manoomin, which means “good berry” in Ojibwe, several White Earth tribal members and Indian and non-Indian protesters who have demonstrated along the Line 3 construction route. They say the DNR is failing to protect the state’s fresh water by allowing Calgary-based Enbridge to pump up to 5 billion gallons of groundwater from construction trenches during a drought.

They also claim the DNR has violated the rights of manoomin, as well as multiple treaty rights for tribal members to hunt, fish and gather wild rice outside reservations.

The lawsuit seeks to stop the extreme water pumping, and to stop the arrests of demonstrators. To date, more than 700 people have been charged for demonstrations along the Line 3 construction route, Bibeau said.

DNR spokeswoman Gail Nosek said the agency is reviewing the lawsuit and had no further comment.

Enbridge spokeswoman Lorraine Little said the company has shown respect for tribal sovereignty and has routed the pipelines outside the Upper and Lower Rice Lake and its watershed because of tribal concerns.

“Line 3 construction permits include conditions that specifically protect wild rice waters,” Little said. “As a matter of fact, Enbridge pipelines have coexisted with Minnesota’s most sacred and productive wild rice stands for over seven decades.”

Line 3 starts in Alberta and clips a corner of North Dakota before crossing northern Minnesota en route to Enbridge’s terminal in Superior, Wisconsin. The 337-mile (542.35-kilometer) line in Minnesota is the last phase in replacing the deteriorating pipeline that was built in the 1960s.

The Associated Press

#FREEPALESTINE #BDS #BOYCOTTISRAEL

Palestinian dad expects no justice for son killed by Israel

THIS IS MSM NOT TAKING ISRAELS SIDE FOR ONCE

BEIT UMMAR, WEST BANK (AP) — A week after the death of his eldest son, Moayed al-Alami sat on the sofa on his ground floor patio, protectively hugging and kissing two of his remaining children

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Israeli military has opened an investigation into the killing of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Alami who was shot by Israeli soldiers as he rode in the family car. But that is no comfort to his father, who is devastated by his son's death and has little faith that he will see justice.

“I have no confidence in the investigation until I see the soldiers in court,” he said. The rear of Moayed's car is riddled with bullet holes and the back seats are still covered in bloodstains.

Mohammed was shot and killed by Israeli forces as he traveled with his father and two siblings in their hometown of Beit Ummar in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. His death sparked two days of violent clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops, resulting in the death of one protester.

Recounting the events of last week, al-Alami said he had just picked up some snacks for the children, using his car, when Mohammed asked to return to the store.

"Mohammed told me, ‘father you have forgotten something.’ I asked if it was necessary, and he said it was very necessary. So, I told him that we will go back and buy it,’’ said al-Alami.

Al-Alami said he turned the car around. Moments later, his white Renault was struck by gunfire from the rear, including at least three bullets that he said hit Mohammed. The boy was rushed to hospital and operated on for four hours before he died.

The Israeli military has said soldiers in the area called on the van to stop, and that the forces fired warning shots and only aimed at the vehicle's tires. Al-Alami said he never heard any warnings. Over 10 bullet holes riddled the vehicle.

The army also said that al-Alami's car resembled a vehicle driven by a group of men who were seen burying what turned out to be a dead baby earlier that day.

Al-Alami's brother — who witnessed the entire event from the balcony -- said the two events were not related and that earlier, another family had been burying a stillborn baby in a cemetery.

“The three people who arrived earlier had come to bury a baby that had died in the womb,” Ashraf Al-Alami said.

After the three people had left, he said he began to worry when he saw soldiers arrive. He feared they would mistake the burial site as a crime scene and grow suspicious. That was when his brother's car approached.

The Israel human rights group B'Tselem this week released what it said was security-camera video of the shooting. In the video, al-Alami's van is seen approaching a dip in the road, with a group of Israeli soldiers standing further down a hill.

Al-Alami is seen doing a U-turn before being chased up the street by troops, who are heard shouting at him to stop, before opening fire. The actual shooting is not seen, but at least a dozen shots are heard. B'Tselem said the video shows the family posed no threat to the troops.

The army has said that senior commanders and military police — which investigate suspected wrongdoing by troops— are involved in the probe.

But Moayed said that he did not expect the investigation to lead to anything. He said the military helped transfer the boy to the hospital after the shooting, but that he has not heard from investigators.

And B'Tselem, a major human rights group, grew so frustrated with the military justice system that in 2016 it halted its longtime practice of assisting in investigations. It accuses the army of whitewashing wrongdoing and says soldiers are rarely punished.

In the first seven months of this year, Israeli fire has killed 11 Palestinian children in the West Bank, surpassing the total number of child killings in 2020, according to the advocacy group Defense for Children Palestine.

Israeli soldiers man a watchtower next to Beit Ummar in order to protect traffic going in and out of the nearby Israeli settlement of Karmei Zur.

Mohammed’s funeral the following day resulted in large clashes in which a 20-year-old Palestinian man was killed by Israeli army fire. His funeral was held on Friday, followed by more clashes.

The mayor of Beit Ummar – who is also a member of the extended al-Alami family — said that most of Beit Ummar’s 17,000 residents attended the boy's funeral.

‘‘The soldiers did not allow us to bury our child in dignity,’’ said Habis Al-Alami. ‘‘To kill a boy with just bread in his hand. It is a crime, we just want to be treated as human beings.’’

Jack Jeffery And Imad Isseid, The Associated Press

Opinion: Being Black in Canada means being at increased risk of mental health problems

Special to National Post 
By Dr. Kwame McKenzie

© Provided by National Post People walk by a mural of George Floyd in Graffiti Alley in downtown Toronto, on June 11, 2020. The well-known Toronto alleyway was painted with prominent Black figures and messages of solidarity against anti-Black racism.

COVID-19 has taught us a lot about ourselves as a country. It has shown us that we can be resilient when we work together. We have worked hard to protect each other and that has kept the rates of COVID low compared with many other countries.

It has also increased our understanding of mental health problems. On top of the physical health challenges posed by COVID-19 there have been many other concerns including people worrying about families, finances and housing. Canadians understand that these stresses increase the risk of mental health problems and are one explanation for the higher rates of anxiety, depression and substance use that have been reported in pandemic surveys .

But some groups may be at higher risk than others. The Canadian Medical Association has calculated that 85 per cent of our risk of any illness is based on such factors as poverty, unemployment, bad jobs, poor housing quality, lower levels of education, being victims of crime, pollution, discrimination, and poorer access to health and social care . Communities with greater exposure to the negative aspects of any of these social factors have a higher risk of mental health problems.

The Black population of Canada is exposed to many of these factors .

For instance, the Black population has one of the highest rates of poverty and food bank usage in Canada and things are getting worse. The general rule for immigrant populations in Canada is that each generation outperforms the next. It is hard to start but once you find your feet in this country, your children and then their children reap the benefits. Rates of poverty for your children are lower and for their children lower still. But in Ontario, the opposite is true: Black grandchildren are more likely to live in poverty than their grandparents.

Black children, particularly boys, do less well at school than their parents, especially if their parents came to Canada with a degree. This is not for want of trying; Black kids are more likely to want to get a degree than white kids according to Statistics Canada, but something goes wrong in the school system. Thwarted aspirations are linked to poorer mental health.

And even if people progress at school, Black people in Canada are paid less on average than other people with the same education, and are sometimes paid less for the same job. There are a huge number of scientific papers demonstrating increased rates of anxiety, depression and even psychosis in people who believe they are being unfairly treated by employers because of their race.

'We have to believe': Youth can fight anti-Black racism in Canada

Dahabo Ahmed-Omer: Our political leaders have allowed a climate of anti-Muslim hate to fester in Canada

I could add other factors such as precarious housing, increased rates of criminal prosecution and imprisonment (though there is little evidence of increased offending), and more recently, poorer public health responses to COVID-19, which have meant that the Black community in Toronto, which comprises eight per cent of the population, has accounted for 17 per cent of the people hospitalized .

The term anti-Black racism was coined in Canada to describe the sum total of the social inequalities that the Black population lives with day in and day out, and the fact that as a country, we are not doing enough to deal with them. The social inequalities lead to increased stress, but this stress is supercharged by the fact that the Black community sees that the inequalities seem to be linked to race and that action supposed to promote equality for them has not been effective and rarely goes beyond words.

It produces a toxic psychological environment for Black people in this country.

That environment is worsened by the history of slavery and the lack of an apology for slavery in Canada. It is not helped by increasing rates of hate crimes and everyday racism. It is not helped by seeing that Muslims in Canada can be murdered outside their mosques or just walking along the road.

Black people have worked hard over centuries to build Canada, but the Black population has been left behind when it comes to sharing in the economic benefits of their labour.

The Black population is resilient and there are those who have managed to use adversity to move themselves forward. But they are more likely to be the exception rather than the rule. Studies show a predictable increased risk of some mental health problems in Black people in Canada.

Decreasing the mental health problems linked to COVID-19 requires government policies that recognize the strain we are putting people under and the development of strategies to help those who predictably will struggle. Decreasing the mental health risks for the Black population requires us to recognize the impacts of anti-Black racism.

The recovery gives us an opportunity to start a new chapter in Canada. It could be a chapter where we give everyone an equal chance. To do that we have to decide whether we want to continue racial trauma in Canada or whether we think it is time for all of us to work together to build a better and fairer country.

National Post

Dr. Kwame McKenzie is CEO of the Wellesley Institute, a research and policy institute that works to improve health and health equity in the Greater Toronto Area.

LITHIUM ION BATTERIES KABOOM
A California couple's Tesla caught fire while charging overnight, ignited another Tesla next to it, and caused a massive house fire. They haven't been home in 8 months.

acooban@businessinsider.com (Anna Cooban)

A California couple said that their Tesla Model S caught fire and caused a house fire. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

A couple said their Tesla Model S caught fire while charging overnight, per The Washington Post.

The Tesla ignited a second Model S next to it and caused a massive house fire, they said.

A fire report said the blaze caused about $1 million worth of damage, per The Post.

A California couple has said that their Tesla Model S caught fire while charging in their garage overnight, spread to a second Tesla vehicle before engulfing their house in flames.

Yogi and Carolyn Vindum, residents of San Ramon, California, have not been able to return to their home since the blaze, which happened on December 30 last year, The Washington Post reported.

"If we had lived upstairs in this house, we'd be dead," Yogi Vindum told the Post, which was the first publication to report the fire on Wednesday.

Yogi Vindum said that a car alarm woke them up at 5.37 a.m. that morning as the house filled with smoke, per the Post.

The couple's 2013 Tesla Model S 85 had caught fire as it was charging, and ignited a second Tesla Model S parked next to it - creating explosions strong enough to blow off the garage doors, they told the Post.

The Post's report included video footage of the fire taken by Yogi Vindum on the night.

The Post said that the Vindums received a fire inspection report in July which cited either the car's thermal management system or electrical system as the possible cause of the blaze.

Yogi Vindum told the Post in an video interview that the fire ripped through the garage up to the office above, and destroyed a further two rooms and a bathroom. He and his wife were sleeping in the back of the house and escaped without injuries, he said.

The fire caused more than $1 million worth of damage, the Post reported, citing a report by the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District.

"The firemen said it was so hot that they couldn't walk up the driveway," Yogi Vindum told The Post. At least six fire trucks arrived at the scene, he said.

Tesla has faced mounting concerns over numerous reports of its vehicles catching fire. In July, a new Tesla Model S Plaid reportedly caught fire in Philadelphia while its was being driven, Mark Geragos, the owner's lawyer, said.

In 2019, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation into a potential problem in Tesla Model S and X batteries that could cause fires, it said in a letter addressed to a Tesla lawyer at the time.

The NHTSA told Insider in an email that it would not comment on an open investigation.

Other automakers are facing scrutiny over the safety of their electric vehicles as they rush to release new models. In February, Hyundai recalled 82,000 EVs to replace their battery systems over fire safety concerns, per Reuters.

And General Motors told around 51,000 owners of previously recalled 2017-2019 Chevrolet Bolt EVs in July to avoid parking them indoors or charging them unattended, after receiving reports that two had caught fire in the weeks prior.

Tesla did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

OUCH
Starlink is better than its satellite competition but not as fast as landline internet
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols 

ZDNET

5/8/2021

When it comes to internet speed tests, Ookla's Speedtest is the gold standard. So when Ookla examined its data for Starlink and its satellite internet rivals, HughesNet and Viasat, the numbers it comes up with are meaningful.

 Shutterstock

To no great surprise, Ookla found Starlink beats HughesNet and Viasat handly. The company found that "Starlink was the only satellite internet provider in the United States with fixed-broadband-like latency figures, and median download speeds fast enough to handle most of the needs of modern online life at 97.23 Megabits per second (Mbps) during Q2 2021. HughesNet was a distant second at 19.73 Mbps and Viasat third at 18.13 Mbps."


As for latency, the time between when you start an activity over the internet and when you get a response back, it's not even a competition. Starlink's median latency, 45 milliseconds (ms) is close to fixed broadband's 14 ms. Low latency is vital for voice and video calling, gaming, and live content streaming. By comparison, Viasat, 630 ms, and HughesNet, 724 ms, are almost unusable for these purposes.

Why was there such a huge difference? It's simple physics. Unless we ever get quantum networking, we can't network faster than the speed of light. Starlink uses low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations, flying above us at a relatively close 550 to 1,200 kilometers (km), while HughesNet and Viasat have far higher geosynchronous orbits of about 35,000km.

Of course, even Starlink isn't as fast as cable or fiber-based internet. According to Ookla, the median fixed-broadband in the US is 115.22Mbps with a latency of 15ms. But, Starlink was never meant to compete with Earth-bound internet in cities and suburbs. It's meant to offer an alternative to people living in the country. There I know people who are still using -- yes, I'm serious -- dial-up modems and slow-as-dirt DSL connections with speeds that go all the way down to Kilobits per second (Kbps).

For these users, Starlink is clearly the better choice. But, Starlink is still being rolled out. This means some places at some times get much better performance than others. Ookla found at the top were users in Morgan county, Alabama at 168.30 Mbps, while lagging more than 100 Mbps behind were the residents of Madison County, Indiana.

Generally speaking, due to how the Starlink satellite constellations are currently set up, the farther North you live, the better your connection. But, as Morgan county shows, that's not a hard and fast rule. For example, in Canada Starlink's median download speed of 86.92 Mbps exceeded the country's median fixed broadband speed of 84.24 Mbps.

In other countries, such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom Starlink's speed vastly beats terrestrial internet speeds. In France, Starlink's download speed 139.39 Mbps, easily outran the country-wide fixed broadband average speed of 70.81 Mbp. With Germany, the difference is even larger. A German internet user can expect to see a Starlink speed of 107.98 Mbps while its Earth-bound competitors come in at 58.17 Mbps. While in the UK, and not just in those areas of Scotland far away from the usual internet providers, Starlink's 108.30 Mbps beats fixed broadband, 50.14 Mbps, hollow. Of course, in all cases, Starlink's latency will be slower than its territorial competitors. You can't beat physics.

You might be wondering how HughesNet and Viasat can stay in business. The reason for that is simple. They're the only internet game in town in many countries. For instance, in Brazil, Viasat's 60.30 Mbps download speed is comparable to fixed broadband's 61.38 Mbps. If you live in the campos, the countryside, you can get Viasat, where you may not have a practical alternative.

But, while Starlink may sound wonderful, its manufacturing lines are still lagging far behind demand. I, for instance, have yet to see my Starlink Terminal and I ordered it almost six months ago.

In theory, Starlink will be available around the world by September. In practice, I'm not counting on it.

Is Starlink for everyone? No. But, if you live beyond the reach of conventional high-speed internet or areas with poor general internet service, you'll want to try to get it. Once in hand, it's clearly the best satellite internet service.

Related Stories:
Starlink: Elon Musk's satellite internet explained
SpaceX president says Starlink global satellite broadband service to be live by September
The ins and outs of Starlink: Internet from the sky

Elizabeth Warren laid into Amazon and Facebook for trying to sideline new FTC chair Lina Khan. Both companies 'fear' Khan's antitrust expertise, she said.

© Provided by Business Insider Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed introducing a wealth tax. Tom Williams/Getty Images

Elizabeth Warren attacked Facebook and Amazon over their objections to FTC chair Lina Khan.

Both companies tried to get Khan recused from antitrust cases involving them, claiming she's biased.

Warren said the companies' concerns were motivated by fear of Khan's expertise.

Elizabeth Warren attacked Facebook and Amazon on Wednesday for trying to get new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Lina Khan taken off any antitrust cases involving them.

The companies were trying to sideline Khan because they "fear" her expertise in antitrust law, Warren said in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.

Warren was joined by Sens. Pramila Jayapal, Richard Blumenthal, and Cory Booker in a letter. The senators said Facebook and Amazon's attempts to sideline Khan "only add to the perception that you are attempting to bully your regulators, disarm the FTC, and avoid accountability rather than to strengthen ethics standards."

Khan, a Yale Law School graduate who published a paper entitled "Amazon's antitrust paradox" in 2017, was nominated to the FTC on June 15. Later that month, Amazon filed a 25-page request to the FTC asking to have Khan removed from any judgement involving the company.

Facebook did the same in July, requesting that Khan be recused from an ongoing antitrust lawsuit filed against the company by the FTC.

Both companies said Khan has displayed bias against them in the past.

Read more: Read the complete NDAs Insider obtained in its investigation and see how Facebook, Google and Apple enforce silence among employees

"The real basis of your concerns appears to be that you fear Chair Khan's expertise and interpretation of federal antitrust law," the senators wrote.

"To argue that federal ethics laws preclude Chair Khan from exercising her expertise is illogical and inconsistent with the plain language of the relevant statutes and with FTC ethics officials' interpretations of recusal requirements," they added.

Warren wrote in a tweet that "Amazon and Facebook want to sideline @linakhanFTC to force an @FTC stalemate and evade accountability for their anti-competitive behavior."

In the letter, the senators also asked the companies to disclose how many of their attorneys had worked at the FTC, the Department of Justice (DOJ), or for a state Attorney General, as well as how many of their lobbyists have worked in Congress.

Warren has attacked Big Tech before, claiming companies like Amazon and Facebook are anti-competitive. During her presidential candidacy run, Warren said she would like to break up the Big Tech companies including Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

Facebook shuts down NYU misinformation study, sparking outrage

Jonathan Greig 
ZDNET

Facebook is facing significant backlash from lawyers and professors at two New York universities after the platform shut down a study being done on political ads and the spread of misinformation.

 Getty Images/iStockphoto

If you're in finance, you probably want the latest security quotes, stock prices of all US companies, and market summaries from S&P 500, DJIA, NASDAQ & NYSE, and other indices updates.

You can do this by adding integrations like Bloomberg Market Data and News or Stock Exchange or CNBC. If you're using Bloomberg's skill, you can say, "Alexa, ask Bloomberg for market updates," or if you're using Stock Exchange, you can say, "Alexa, ask Stock Exchange to quote my portfolio". If you're using CNBC, say, "Alexa, ask CNBC how are the markets doing?"

New York University (NYU) and Columbia University released a statement on Wednesday condemning the decision by Facebook, which decided to shut down the accounts of New York University researchers Laura Edelson and Damon McCoy Tuesday evening.

In a statement, Edelson said they had been negotiating with Facebook for months over a research tool called Ad Observer. The tool is part of work of NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy, where Edelson is lead researcher and a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at New York University Tandon School of Engineering.

Ad Observer is a browser plugin that gave Facebook users the chance to share "limited and anonymous information" about the political ads they see on a daily basis. The tool also allows researchers and reporters to look through political advertising trends on Facebook in their states.

"Yesterday evening, Facebook suspended my Facebook account and the accounts of several people associated with Cybersecurity for Democracy, our team at NYU. This has the effect of cutting off our access to Facebook's Ad Library data, as well as Crowdtangle," Edelson said.

"Over the last several years, we've used this access to uncover systemic flaws in the Facebook Ad Library, to identify misinformation in political ads, including many sowing distrust in our election system, and to study Facebook's apparent amplification of partisan misinformation. By suspending our accounts, Facebook has tried to shut down all this work."

Edelson added that Facebook had effectively cut off access to more than two dozen other researchers and journalists who get access to Facebook data through our project, including work measuring vaccine misinformation with the Virality Project and other partners.

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The company said it will also inform users if their information was "improperly shared" with the data firm.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment, but Facebook product management director Mike Clark released a blog post accusing the university of studying political ads "using unauthorized means to access and collect data from Facebook" that was in violation of the website's Terms of Service.

"We took these actions to stop unauthorized scraping and protect people's privacy in line with our privacy program under the FTC Order. The researchers gathered data by creating a browser extension that was programmed to evade our detection systems and scrape data such as usernames, ads, links to user profiles and 'Why am I seeing this ad?' information, some of which is not publicly-viewable on Facebook," Clark said.

"The extension also collected data about Facebook users who did not install it or consent to the collection. The researchers had previously archived this information in a now offline, publicly-available database."

Clark corroborated what NYU said, writing that the two sides had been negotiating since Facebook sent both Edelson and McCoy a cease-and-desist letter last fall demanding they stop using the tool. Facebook wanted the two to take down all of their previous research as well.

Clark said they told NYU the tool was against their Terms of Service before they even deployed it in the summer of 2020. He compared the research project to "scraping," a widespread problem many social media sites now face from cybercriminals and political actors who abuse privileges to steal troves of data from sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.

In April, information belonging to 553 million Facebook users was posted online following a scraping incident.

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Amid concerns over Facebook's use of tracking users with pixels, Belgium joins the Netherlands, France, and EC in legal moves.

The researchers also turned down an attempt by Facebook to give them data collected by the social media platform itself on political ad targeting data from the 2020 US election. Facebook has set up internal programs similar to Ad Observer.

"We made it clear in a series of posts earlier this year that we take unauthorized data scraping seriously, and when we find instances of scraping we investigate and take action to protect our platform," Clark said, arguing further that the violations of privacy outweighed the research's value.

"While the Ad Observatory project may be well-intentioned, the ongoing and continued violations of protections against scraping cannot be ignored and should be remediated."

Edelson said the work they were doing to "make data about disinformation on Facebook transparent" was "vital to a healthy internet and a healthy democracy."

She added that Facebook is "silencing" the two because they were calling attention to the platform's issues dealing with misinformation in political ads, which has become a sensitive topic for the social media giant.

"Worst of all, Facebook is using user privacy, a core belief that we have always put first in our work, as a pretext for doing this," Edelson said. "If this episode demonstrates anything it's that Facebook should not have veto power over who is allowed to study them."

McCoy pointed out that Facebook made this decision right as it is facing widespread backlash from the US government for the spread of COVID-19 vaccine disinformation. Last month, President Joe Biden made waves when he said Facebook was "killing people" through COVID-19 misinformation.

McCoy also criticized Facebook for citing privacy violations considering advertisers "consented to making their ads public."

The two noted that reporters across the country used the tool to write about the 2020 election and that Facebook waited months to shut down their accounts. Hours before their accounts were shut down, they told Facebook they were "studying the spread of disinformation about January 6 on the social media platform."

The researchers' lawyer, Seth Berlin, called it "remarkable" that Facebook would argue political advertising is private considering its purpose and disputed the platform's claims that the Ad Observer team collect private user information.

"Facebook's primary justification for trying to shut down this important research simply doesn't hold up," Berlin said.

Mary Simon officially becomes Canada’s first indigenous governor general


Mary Simon was officially sworn in last week as Canada’s 30th governor general — the first indigenous person ever to hold the position.

“I’m so proud of [Simon],” says Shuswap Band Chief Barb Cote. “What she’s accomplished as an indigenous woman, she’s done a lot in her life. This is a step forward for Canada.”

In the ceremony, Simon said Canadians need to learn the country’s real history in order to move forward with indigenous communities. “Our society must recognize together our moments of regret, alongside those that give us pride, because it creates space for healing, acceptance and the rebuilding of trust,” Simon said. “My view is that reconciliation is a way of life and requires work every day. Reconciliation is getting to know one another.”

Simon, born Mary Jeannie May in Arctic Quebec, now known as Nunavik, brings an impressive resume to her new role as representative of Her Majesty The Queen in Canada. Her appointment follows a career that includes various positions as an advocate and ambassador.

She helped negotiate the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement in 1975 – a landmark deal between the Cree and Inuit in Quebec’s north, the provincial government and Hydro-Québec.

Simon was also an Inuit representative during the negotiations that led to the patriation of the Constitution in 1982, which included an acknowledgement of indigenous treaty rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In 1986, she led the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), a group created in 1977 to represent the Inuit in all the Arctic countries. At the ICC, she championed two priorities for northern indigenous peoples: protecting their way of life from environmental damage and pushing for responsible economic development on their traditional territory.

In 1994, former prime minister Jean Chrétien appointed Simon as Canada’s first ambassador for circumpolar affairs. She was later appointed as Canada’s ambassador to Denmark.

While she is fully fluent in English and Inuktitut, Simon is not fluent in French. Traditionally, the governor general is expected to have a complete command of both official languages. Hundreds of French-speaking Canadians have written complaints to the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. In her address, Simon reiterated her commitment to learning the French language.

On Thursday, Simon spoke with the Queen. In a short clip of the conversation posted on The Royal Family’s Instagram account, the Queen said it was good to speak with Simon. “You’re taking over a very important job.”

James Rose, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Columbia Valley Pioneer